**EMBARGO: No electronic distribution, Web posting or street sales before Tuesday 12:01 a.m. ET Dec. 4, 2013. No exceptions for any reasons. EMBARGO set by source.** Andy Rubin, the engineer heading Google's robotic effort and the man who built the Android software for smartphones, in Los Altos Hills, Calif., Oct. 29, 2013. Google has acquired seven companies in hopes of automating electronics assembly and maybe even taking on Amazon in retail delivery. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Google has launched an aggressive effort to develop a new class of robots, acquiring seven companies in the past six months and putting the man behind Android in charge.

All but one of the firms are based in the Bay Area - four in San Francisco, including Bot & Dolly and Meka Robotics.

The Mountain View technology giant is being coy about its ultimate intentions, but the move is not too surprising if you consider Google's recent history.

The company is already building self-driving cars, which are rolling robots in their own right. And it's slowly transformed a search engine that once relied on counting links into one of the world's most sophisticated artificial intelligence tools, perpetually improving the accuracy of results by coming to "understand" how words and concepts relate to each other. For years, it's been hiring the leading minds in the space, like Peter Norvig and Ray Kurzweil.

Artificial intelligence software is, in effect, the brains of robotics, allowing the machines to operate autonomously. So now - in a pattern Google followed in eventually building its own phones, tablets and PCs - the company is moving into the hardware side.

Andy Rubin, who helped turn Android into the dominant mobile operating system, is leading the new effort, which was first disclosed in the New York Times. Rather than focusing on the consumer market, the company is initially exploring the use of robots in retailing and parts of manufacturing that haven't already been automated, such as electronics assembly, the Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the project.

Many functions

The latter use is self-explanatory. Retailing could presumably include warehouse management, packaging and distribution.

Google declined to comment, but Chief Executive Larry Page said on Google+: "I am excited about Andy Rubin's next project. His last big bet, Android, started off as a crazy idea that ended up putting a supercomputer in hundreds of millions of pockets. It is still very early days for this, but I can't wait to see the progress."

The local companies that Google acquired include Meka Robotics, which develops friendly-looking humanoid robots; Bot & Dolly, which makes robotic camera systems for movie production; Autofuss, Bot & Dolly's sister marketing company, which has worked on several commercials for Google products; Redwood Robotics, yet another San Francisco startup building robotic manipulators (read: arms and hands) for manufacturing and one day "service industries such as health care or hospitality"; Industrial Perception of Palo Alto, which creates robot arms for loading and unloading delivery trucks; and Holomni, a Mountain View company that creates high-tech casters (i.e. wheels).

Google also bought Schaft, a Japanese company that developed a humanoid robot.

Impact on humans

Robots obviously hold great promise to free humans from mindless, repetitive tasks - but in the industrial context that Google seems to be eyeing, the question is what does it all mean for traditional jobs? Apple or Motorola may be thrilled with robots that can replace the human hands that assemble smartphones or tablets. But as controversial as those jobs are, they provide a critical source of income for workers in developing nations. Ditto for the workers in Amazon's product warehouses (another source of controversy), or the drivers who could be replaced by that company's just-announced plans to implement delivery drones.

During a discussion on this issue at SRI International earlier this year, MIT research scientist Andrew McAfee noted that automation provided by computers and robotics has already helped push corporate profits toward all-time highs while depressing wages to postwar lows.

"It's not a blip; there's been a steady downward trend for decades," said McAfee, co-author of "Race Against the Machine."

Others are more optimistic, including Aaron Edsinger, co-founder of Redwood Robotics, which Google now owns. He pointed out that producing food used to require the sweat and toil of the majority of Americans. But tractors, irrigation and other technologies mean that just 2 percent of the workforce can now feed the nation, freeing the rest of us up to write stories, create ads, develop apps, invent robots and more.

"I'd be happy if we're building the John Deere of robots," he said. "There is disruption, but there are positive effects for the labor force."

New interest

Google's move into robotics is likely to draw renewed attention and money into the space, said Brian Gerkey, chief executive of the Open Source Robotics Foundation. OSRF develops and maintains ROS, an open-source robotics operating system developed to create a common platform that researchers could use to develop apps for robots. Gerkey believes at least three of the companies Google acquired use ROS, raising the possibility that Google will build upon and further popularize the standard.

"It's a pretty exciting day for robotics," he said. "When someone like Google makes an investment like that in robots, others are likely to follow suit. It can only spur investment and innovation."